


Union

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Alcohol, Disguise, Established Relationship, F/M, Fake Marriage, Hotel Sex, Illusions, No Plot/Plotless, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Reminiscing, Secret Relationship, Ten Years Later, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-13 17:19:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14753078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Mukuro is a failsafe, here to make sure Sawada doesn’t stumble over his own feet and fall down a flight of stairs as much as anything else, and that means his attention can be put to better uses than lingering over every one of the handful of guests in the hotel lobby. Like, for example, lingering over the one he is most interested in." Mukuro and Chrome play their part in an undercover assignment to the fullest.





	Union

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snkt](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snkt/gifts).



The lobby of the hotel is almost empty.

Mukuro appreciates that. He’s more than capable of keeping tabs on everyone in even a crowded ballroom, if he needs to -- he’s done it before and he can certainly do it again -- but it requires a greater output of his attention, and things will necessarily fall through the cracks even with backup. But this isn’t one of the Vongola-hosted parties to show off strength as much as elegance; this is a simple negotiation, minor enough for even Sawada to be trusted to handle on his own, and that means Mukuro’s position as a bodyguard is more for the sake of soothing Gokudera’s high-strung nerves than anything else. The possibility of real danger appearing is vanishingly unlikely, even if Sawada carried himself with presence enough to suggest his actual value in the title of Tenth, and their ostensible leader’s distaste for such means Mukuro doesn’t even have to put on a show of his power to intimidate anyone who may think of taking on the head of the Vongola family. He’s a failsafe, here to make sure Sawada doesn’t stumble over his own feet and fall down a flight of stairs as much as anything else, and that means his attention can be put to better uses than lingering over every one of the handful of guests in the hotel lobby.

Like, for example, lingering over the one he is most interested in.

“Here you are my dear,” Mukuro purrs now, drawling the endearment long and syrupy as he returns to the table and the companion he left behind him for the sake of procuring the drinks he now holds. “I got you your favorite. With extra cherries, I know how much you like those.”

Chrome doesn’t flinch at his tone, quite, but Mukuro thinks the blank mask of her expression is enough to speak loud to her displeasure for anyone who knows her well. Still, she’s tied to this charade as thoroughly as he is, and that means all she can really do is flicker a smile up at him and reach to take the condensation-chilled flute he’s just set down in front of her. “Yes. Thank you.”

“Of course,” Mukuro says, still speaking in the barely-put-upon tone he’s been maintaining for the whole of the night. There’s a chair on the far side of the table from where Chrome is sitting but he ignores it in favor of stepping in to claim the other side of the loveseat that she is perched against. “Anything for my heart.” He presses in close against Chrome’s hip to rest his thigh against the curve of her own and pin the soft folds of her pale skirt in place between them; when he lifts his arm it’s to fall around Chrome’s shoulders and pull her in tighter. “I’m happy doing anything if I can bring a smile to your face.”

Chrome ducks her head to look at her drink as she reaches out to stir the straw through the bubbles fizzing through the liquid. “Don’t you think you’re overdoing it?” she murmurs, dropping back towards the barely-there tone she used to use when they first met in person, the delicate whisper of sound she still falls into when she’s too comfortable or too anxious to think about overriding it to clarity. “Boss is going to notice.”

“It’s all part of the cover,” Mukuro responds, in a tone to match Chrome’s and with a smile at his lips that barely flickers as he speaks. “We’re supposed to be newlyweds, aren’t we? Being disgustingly in love is just playing the part well.”

Chrome’s headshake is very small; Mukuro thinks it’s only because he’s so close that he sees it at all. “He’s going to see through the act.”

Mukuro’s smile pulls too wide at his mouth; he has to duck his head to hide it against the dark of Chrome’s hair falling around her face to hide her illusion-masked features. When he speaks it’s still in that whisper, this time so near against Chrome’s ear that it turns even mundane words into an intimacy of warm breath against sensitive skin. “Are you doubting me, my sweet Chrome?” Mukuro slides his hand in over Chrome’s shoulder and up to trail against the neckline of her blouse, where the low scoop of it reveals a few inches more moonlight-pale skin than she usually displays; her breath catches, her shoulders flex with the electricity of response. Mukuro shuts his eyes for a moment, the better to shut out the rest of the world and linger in the sound of Chrome’s breathing and the feel of her skin glowing with warmth against his fingertips. “ _No one_ sees through my illusions unless I want them to.”

Chrome’s exhale shudders against Mukuro’s shirt. For a moment Mukuro thinks she’s going to give way entirely, that the strain in her shoulders will collapse to drop her almost into his lap in answer to the pull of his arm around her. Then he sees her fingers curl at her skirt, he feels her reclaim strength for herself, and he’s smiling pleasure even before she moves to straighten again, pulling upright in direct opposition to the lulling slide of his fingers against her collarbone.

“ _Do_ you want him to see through it?” Chrome asks, cutting straight to the heart of it as clearly as if she is looking through the glass of the First Family, and she reaches for her drink without lifting her gaze to meet Mukuro’s again.

Mukuro beams at her. It’s something he has never tired of, something he thinks he never will be done with appreciating. He remembers too well Chrome as she was when he met her, before she had him, before he remade the broken girl she was into Chrome Dokuro with the gift of a name and the power of faith. It’s always dizzying to think back on it, to remember downcast eyes and a shaky voice and to match those to the self-assured young woman sitting beside him now, radiant even in her frustration with him and unwilling to let him purchase himself forgiveness with the hum of a whisper or the press of a touch. Mukuro loves Chrome’s compliance, relishes in her willing surrender, but he likes this better still, to see the person she has become without him, to see the strength she has gained until she is willing even to reject his own persuasion in pursuit of something she has deemed more important for herself.

“You don’t need to worry,” Mukuro says, more loudly this time and back in the tone of doting husband he has been assuming for the whole of the evening. “I asked for one with no alcohol so you can enjoy it to your heart’s content.” He reaches out to press his palm to the flat of Chrome’s stomach, to cradle his touch against the invisible weight of the illusions that have kept her alive for all the long years since they first met. “You know I wouldn’t do anything to put our child at risk.”

Chrome’s face goes crimson underneath the fall of her hair, her cheeks burning with color as she cuts her gaze sideways to meet Mukuro’s amused eyes. Mukuro smirks back at her, holding the shock in her stare without flinching; they’re still caught in looking at each other when the sound of a sigh from behind them announces the approach of a familiar audience.

“I’m _exhausted_.” Sawada is speaking clearly as he comes around the edge of the chairs and steps forward to drop heavily into the one Mukuro passed over upon his return; he has a hand up to press against the bridge of his nose, where a crease is pressing itself towards permanency between his drawn-together eyebrows. He drops his head back against the support of the chair behind him and heaves a sigh. “There must be someone else I can send on these.”

Mukuro takes a breath to prepare to speak, but it’s Chrome who beats him to it, murmuring in that tone that sounds so deceptively gentle to those who don’t know her well enough to see through the elegant illusion of the sound. Her face is perfectly calm again, without any trace of the color staining her cheeks under what must be a near-instantaneous illusion she has formed. Mukuro is impressed: even looking for it it’s very hard to see the shimmer of color that indicates the façade she’s crafted for herself. “We met you this morning, didn’t we? I’m sorry, I’m afraid I’m not terribly good with names.”

“Your smile makes up for it,” Mukuro says, picking up the trailing end of Chrome’s speech as Sawada looks up to blink confusion at them. “Sawada-san, wasn’t it?” Sawada looks at him, still perplexed at this claim of unfamiliarity; then his gaze lands on Mukuro’s illusion-lightened hair, and the dark of matched eyes looking back at him from the veil of the face Mukuro has crafted as his disguise, and his confusion gives way to a flinch of self-aware apology.

“Ah,” he blurts, and pushes to sit up more properly in his chair. “Yes. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed you would remember me.”

“You’ll have to thank my dear wife for that,” Mukuro beams at him. “I admit I don’t think I’d remember where we even are for how delightfully distracting she is proving herself!”

Sawada glances at Chrome and makes an attempt at a smile. It’s forced enough that Mukuro is reminded vividly of why Sawada, as a rule, doesn’t take on this kind of subterfuge. “Right,” he says, sounding about as uncomfortable as he looks. He ducks his head and clears his throat. “You’re...newlyweds, right?”

“Just a few months ago,” Mukuro beams. Chrome is looking down at her drink and stirring the straw through the liquid rather than watching him, but that doesn’t stop him from smiling at her with as much possessive affection as he can fit on the expression. “It took a while before I could get the days off from work to celebrate properly, but we’re making up for lost time now!” He leans in over the table conspiratorially; Sawada tips forward in answer, responding instinctively to the suggestion of Mukuro’s movement even as his eyes are still dark with visible discomfort at this pretension. Mukuro clears his throat and offers a stage-whisper to the other. “We’re actually celebrating a little early. We just found out we’re expecting another addition to the family.”

Sawada’s eyebrows jump up. “Oh,” he says, sounding a little bit strangled on discomfort or amusement, Mukuro can’t determine which. “Ah. Well. Congratulations.” He leans back in his chair and clears his throat, nodding to the drink before Chrome as he folds his hands tightly together in his lap. “Shouldn’t she not be drinking, if she’s…”

“It’s non-alcoholic,” Mukuro says lightly. “Luckily I’m here to celebrate for the both of us!” He lifts his own drink towards Sawada, grinning with the bright, manic edge of a man a little further into his drink than he has yet realized. “Why not stay and have a round or two with me, if your work was so stressful?” Mukuro brings his drink to his lips to swallow a long mouthful of it. “What is it that you do, I don’t think you mentioned.”

Sawada turns white and then red in amusingly quick succession as his shoulders tense with immediate discomfort at Mukuro’s offer. “Ah. No, I’m sorry, I can’t hold my alcohol at all.” He pushes to his feet in a rush without waiting for Mukuro to offer a response. “I’m sure a good night’s rest will put me in a much better mood by morning and without a hangover to go with it.”

“Suit yourself,” Mukuro tells him. “Sleep well then!”

“Goodnight,” Chrome adds from alongside him, still caught in the curve of Mukuro’s arm. Sawada flickers a smile at them, still looking somewhere between uncomfortable and confused, and he turns to move out of the lobby and towards the elevators that will carry him up to his room. Mukuro doesn’t watch him go, but when he looks to Chrome her attention is tracking their leader, her gaze following him from under the concealing shadow of her hair with the focus of a hawk rather than that of the gentle bride she is playing. Mukuro watches her for a moment, appreciating the dichotomy in the expression of the woman under his arm; and then he ducks in to drop a kiss against the dark of her hair to draw her attention back around to him as he swallows another mouthful of his drink.

“You can head on up to bed too, if you want,” he tells her without looking away from his glass. “I think I’ll have one more round. No more than two, for sure, before I come up. You won’t be sleeping alone for long.”

“Alright,” Chrome says, with startling obedience. Mukuro glances at her sideways but there’s no trace of the tight-wound self-consciousness that he was winning from her before; her mouth is soft, her expression relaxed as she reaches for her drink so she can make a motion towards finishing it. Mukuro watches the press of her lips against the straw, tracks the motion of her throat as she swallows; there’s a tinge of lipstick against the plastic when she sets her glass down and reaches to push the fall of her hair back behind her ear. “I _am_ worn out. I’m afraid I got more sun today than I was expecting to.” She reaches out to brace herself against Mukuro’s knee as she pushes to her feet; the fact that her fingers slide up significantly higher than they need to doesn’t escape Mukuro’s notice any more, he suspects, than the sudden answering tension in his body escapes Chrome’s. Chrome gets to her feet, letting her fingers draw up and against Mukuro’s thigh as she stands and turns to look back at Mukuro sitting behind her.

“I’m off to bed, then,” she says, and ducks her head into a nod to Mukuro. “I’ll see you soon, dear.”

“Wait,” Mukuro says, and sits up straight as he lifts a hand towards Chrome’s downturned face. “Is that any kind of a way to say goodbye to your husband?” He gestures with a pair of fingers, urging Chrome to approach again as he tips his head and lets his lips curve into a smile somewhere between illusion and sincerity, straddling the line between the two as precisely as he has been all night. “Give me a kiss, sweetheart.”

Chrome doesn’t move. “We’re in public,” she reminds him. “Dear.”

Mukuro huffs a soft laugh. “Hardly,” he says. “No one’s paying attention to us.” The argument is as well-suited for her case as for his -- he can have no reason to insist on this bit of playacting when there is no one here to benefit from it -- but Chrome’s lashes dip at his words, and she doesn’t speak to offer resistance. “We’re on our honeymoon, I can’t let my wife go to sleep without a goodnight kiss.”

Chrome goes on looking at Mukuro for a moment. There’s only a faint hint of color at her cheeks, none of the crimson stain that she bore so clearly in the moment before Sawada interrupted Mukuro’s idle flirtation; it could be an illusion again, but Mukuro can see no trace of purple clinging to the arches of Chrome’s cheeks or the dark of her unmasked eye. More likely it’s a case of her composure, as well-learned over the last years as that self-confidence suggesting itself across the line of her shoulders and in the curve of her back; and finally she lifts her head and tosses her hair back over her shoulders with an intent that is as good as verbal assent would be. Mukuro smiles and leans forward in his seat, pulling forward to the front edge as he reaches out to touch his fingers to Chrome’s cheek and cradle her to steadiness, and Chrome braces her fingertips at his shoulder and ducks in and down to press her mouth to warmth against the give of his own.

Mukuro knows what to expect. Chrome has to be coaxed into this kind of expression of affection when they’re on this side of privacy, and even then his best efforts will never get him more than a quick press of lips to his own, accompanied by a flush glowing enough to pass for a sunrise against the pale white of Chrome’s cheeks. He’s grinning in expectation of the same, ready to pull at Chrome’s neck to urge her to linger in the contact: and of course, it’s just as he’s relaxing into his certain expectation that Chrome does what she always does, and pushes casually past all that he’s anticipating. Her hand braces at his shoulder with force, steady enough to take the whole of her weight as she rocks forward onto her toes, and no sooner is her mouth against his than her lips are parting and her tongue is pressing heat in and against Mukuro’s startled-soft mouth. Mukuro gives in at once, surrender coming easy in the wake of his surprise, and for a moment he’s entirely at her mercy, his palm pressing close to Chrome’s cheek as if to steady them together while Chrome tastes against the roof of his mouth and presses wet heat against his tongue. She tastes sweet, like the cherry-flavored soda she was drinking, and her lips are cool with the tang of the drink; by the time she draws back and away Mukuro can feel his thoughts whirling on infinitely more dizziness than what effect the alcohol in his drink has rendered to him.

“Goodnight,” Chrome says, shaping the words to the suggestion of a kiss with how close she is still lingering to Mukuro’s mouth. “Husband.” And then her hand is drawing away, and she’s straightening to turn, and Mukuro is left to let his hand fall to his lap and gaze after the grace of her retreating form.

It takes him some time to collect himself. There are few things in this world or any other that are capable of catching him off-guard more than once; it’s a major part of Chrome’s appeal, Mukuro thinks, that she can achieve such seemingly at will, whenever it proves most convenient for her to sweep his balance out from under him. He doesn’t get up to follow her, although he considers it; he stays where he is instead, cradling his condensation-chilled drink in his fingers and smiling into the liquid with an expression as pleased as it is private. It’s only when he finishes that he gets to his feet, slowly, without any kind of hurry to the motion, and goes up to the bar to hand his empty cup back to the man drying a wineglass behind the counter.

The stranger looks up as Mukuro approaches. His gaze is polite, friendly and reserved at one and the same time; he offers Mukuro a smile before ducking his head again to allow the other a chance to retreat in silence. The thought of it is amusing and satisfying at once, like watching someone moving through the well-known steps of a dance before coming forward to meet them, and Mukuro acts with as much grace as the bartender, coming in with the slightly unsteady steps of a man one too many drinks in as he sets his glass at the counter with enough force to ring a clear chime against the surface.

“Thanks for the drink,” he says, coupling his slightly too-loud tone with a friendly smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever had one so good.”

The bartender ducks his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you sir,” he says politely, setting the glass in his hand aside as he reaches out to take the empty cup Mukuro has just set down. “Would you care for another?”

Mukuro shakes his head. “No,” he says, and leans in to rest both elbows on the counter so he can move towards the impression of casual conversation in spite of his refusal. “I’d be happy to down another one or two if it were just me, but I’ve got company waiting for me upstairs.” He lets his smile pull wider against his mouth as the bartender looks up to meet his conspiratorial gaze. “Can’t keep the missus waiting.”

The bartender smiles politely. “I can hardly blame you for that,” he says, and sets the empty cup aside to be washed before he reaches to reclaim the glass he was drying before. “That was your wife with you?”

Mukuro ducks his head into a nod without hesitating at all over the stretch of reality. “Newlyweds,” he says with as much show of pride as he can fit on the word before he breaks into a laugh suited for the show he’s making of his assumed intoxication. “Or at least I still feel that way!”

The bartender laughs. “I can see why, with a wife that pretty.” He sets the dried glass aside and reaches for another to resume the careful weight of the towel in his hand over the shining surface. “How long has it been?”

“How long,” Mukuro muses. He leans hard at the counter so he can rest his chin in his hand and squint at the wall over the bartender’s shoulder in a great show of calculation. “A month?” He frowns and shakes his head. “No, no, the sakura was still blooming, it must have been longer than that. A few months, at least.”

The bartender raises his eyebrows. “You’ve had some time to get used to each other, then.”

Mukuro nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Not that it’s hard, with a girl like that doting on me. I think I may have died and gone to heaven!”

The bartender huffs a laugh. “Isn’t that what marriage is supposed to be?” he asks. “Glad to hear it’s working out so well for you two. You make a lovely couple.”

Mukuro laughs. “Thank you,” he agrees, with something like his usual weight on the words. “I like to think so.” He heaves a sigh and straightens from his lean over the counter with a put-upon show of effort. “I suppose I shouldn’t keep her waiting. Thanks again for the drink.”

“Of course,” the bartender says, giving over his work for a moment to lift a hand in a wave. “I hope you both have a pleasant evening.”

Mukuro’s laugh purrs dark and throaty over his tongue. “Oh indeed,” he says, as the bartender blinks surprise at the dip the other’s voice has taken. “We always do.” And he turns to retreat back across the room, leaving the bartender gazing confusion at him as he lets his pace wander the edge between intoxicated and elegant.

They have two rooms reserved: Sawada’s near the end of the hallway, far from the entry points of both elevator and stairwell, and another just in front of the elevator alcove, intended for the other two. Sawada had been apologetic about the need for a single room as a means of maintaining the cover Mukuro and Chrome volunteered to adopt; Mukuro hadn’t bothered to say anything in answer to that at all. It was far more entertaining to leave Chrome to duck her head and fumble through a demurral while Sawada misread her flush as embarrassment instead of the tension of possible discovery Mukuro knows it to be, until by the time they arrived here Sawada hardly even flinched when Mukuro asked for a room with a single bed in the most doting tone he could muster. Chrome surely arrived here before him and let herself into the shadows of the room, although there’s no indication of a light under the door; Mukuro is quiet in unlocking the door and letting himself in, moving with as much silence as he can bring to his own movements beyond what giveaway the door offers.

“Darling,” he says, speaking in a mock-whisper that will still carry clearly to anyone in the hallway. There’s no one there, Mukuro’s own attention and awareness ensures that fact, but there’s no point in a show not played out to its fullest extent, and there’s an entertainment to this too, to giving voice to the role he’s adopted for the night even as he slips his shoes off with a grace all his own so he can pad farther into the shadows of the room without bothering with a light. There’s a shadow at the bed, the outline of Chrome lying with her back turned away and the blankets pulled up over her shoulders; Mukuro makes for the bed with careful steps as he reaches for the loosened tie wrapped around his neck and tugs to slide it free of its knot. “Asleep so soon?” Chrome doesn’t stir, even when Mukuro comes in to drop to a knee at the edge of the bed and tip the mattress towards himself; when he reaches out for her hip she doesn’t so much as catch the even pace of her breathing.

“Sweetheart,” Mukuro purrs, letting his voice drop off into a lower tone as he slides down over the bed to lie across the sheets behind Chrome, as he slips his hand down to press the blankets close against the curve of her body. “You don’t mean to refuse me now.” He ducks his head in closer, gauging his approach more by experience than by sight as he lets his breathing spill heat over the line of Chrome’s neck. “And on our wedding night, too.”

“That’s not the story,” Chrome says, speaking so softly Mukuro can barely hear her voice as anything more than a rustle of fabric as his hand slides down against her hip. “We agreed we were sticking to the story.”

“We are,” Mukuro says, in his own voice and with Chrome’s borrowed softness to ease it down to a murmur. His palm slides down Chrome’s hip and to the curve of her thigh; against the sheets Chrome’s fingers curl into a fist, in the shadows of the room her lips part on a voiceless huff of air. “This way we have plausible deniability.”

Chrome shakes her head against the pillows. “You’re doing too much,” she murmurs. “The boss knows better than that, he’s going to see through it.”

“That’s why I’m being dramatic,” Mukuro tells her. “He won’t look for reality if he’s sure the show is just a show.”

Chrome gusts a sigh that flickers up towards the very edge of what could be called exasperation, if she were someone else, if Mukuro were someone else. “And everyone else?”

“Sees a man in love with his beautiful wife.” Mukuro smiles into the dark around them. “It’s always amusing when truth is more persuasive than fiction.”

Chrome turns her head down against the sheets. The motion lets her hair fall over her face to hide her expression but Mukuro doesn’t need the aid of sight to know that she’s flushing, her cheeks coloring with that easy heat that is always so ready to answer the sound of his voice. “It’s not truth,” she says, the whisper of her voice muffled further by the blankets pressing to her lips. “We’re not married.”

“We could be.” Mukuro lifts his hand from her hip and up instead, to tug at the weight of the blanket covering the curve of Chrome’s body. Chrome leans back against him when he pulls at the edge of it, like she’s trying to brace herself in place against his chest, but Mukuro doesn’t strip it down to lay her entirely bare. All he wants is to find the curl of her fingers, her grip slack and heavy against the sheets underneath them, so he can fit his hand atop hers, can find the space to slide his fingers between Chrome’s own. Chrome gives way to this, the way Mukuro knew she would, without needing urging or even a request: her hand eases to his, her fingers slide to make space for his own, and then Mukuro is cradling Chrome’s hand against his, relishing the possessive affection implicit in the motion. “All you need to do is say yes.” His fingers tighten, color glows against the night; in his grip Chrome’s finger collects the shadow, drawing it in around her ring finger as if it’s magnetized. Mukuro lifts her hand from the bed and out into the spill of moonlight coming through the open curtains at the window; when the light hits Chrome’s skin it finds the glint of gold turned to moonlight-silver by the pale color. “And I can make an honest woman of you at last.”

Chrome’s fingers tighten around Mukuro’s own. Mukuro doesn’t look down to see the tilt of her head; he doesn’t need to, not to know where Chrome’s gaze is fixed. They stay as they are for a moment, starlight forming itself to a shine against Chrome’s finger; and then Chrome shakes her head, and the ring gives way to a puff of shadowed smoke before Mukuro has willed it to dissipate.

“No,” she says, and turns her head down to the pillows again as she draws her hand in against her chest, taking Mukuro’s touch in with her. “Not an illusion.”

Mukuro smiles at the lightened shade of Chrome’s hair tangled across the pillows before him. “Very well,” he says, and he draws his fingers free of Chrome’s tentative hold to lift them to drag over her hair instead. Her illusion gives way to his touch as easily as his own fantasy of marriage melted from her finger: color strips from her hair, composed pallor falls away from her face, and the everyday attractiveness of a pretty girl is gone to leave in its place the ethereal reality of Chrome as she is in truth, all pale skin and burning cheeks and hair the deep color of shadows at night. Her head is still turned down to the sheets, the dark of the eyepatch covering her right eye lost against the shadows of her hair and of the bed, but Mukuro can see the sweep of her lashes, can track the way they shift in a blink as he brushes aside the illusion covering Chrome’s face like spiderwebs hanging silk-delicate in the air. When he leans in closer it’s to press against the line of Chrome’s jaw, to weight his lips into a ghostly kiss against the self-conscious heat burning under her skin. “No illusions, then.”

Chrome’s breath spills from her, her lashes dip over her eye; Mukuro’s lips touch her skin, her head cants up to make space for him. Mukuro can feel the catch of her inhale as well as he can hear it, can track the curl of her fingers at the sheets as his hand returns to her waist. “Mukuro-sama,” Chrome breathes, the giveaway of his name hardly more than a whimper at her lips, and she’s turning underneath him, falling onto her back as she opens her eye to look up at him and lifts both her hands out to touch against his face. Her fingers catch against the weightless pull of illusion, Mukuro shuts his eyes in easy surrender, and when Chrome’s touch slides up across his face it takes the illusion with it, melting it to nothing like she’s sweeping aside a fog. Chrome’s exhale speaks to her satisfaction, her hands catch to brace at the back of Mukuro’s neck, and Mukuro ducks in even before he opens his eyes, trusting to familiarity to guide the press of his lips down against the open part of Chrome’s more than his sight.

They are very quiet. Their voices would be a giveaway, to a clever man, pleasure-moaned names more than enough to identify them as the bodyguards they are in truth to anyone interested in pressing an ear to the crack between door and frame; so Mukuro stays close, muffling the sound of Chrome’s breathing straining in her throat against his own lips as he pushes the weight of the blankets away from the give of her body and leans in to fit his own atop hers. She’s changed since she left, she’s wearing no more than a pair of panties and a silky nightshirt over the pale curves of her body, and her hands show none of the hesitation Mukuro can taste on his stifled voice. Chrome’s fingers work down the front of his shirt, unfastening buttons even before she’s pulled to urge the hem up and loose of the blandly ordinary pants he’s wearing; Mukuro handles his belt himself, drawing it open one-handed without bothering with looking down to work through the motion. There’s nothing to give them away to someone on the other side of the door, nothing to indicate they are anything other than the doting couple they have been playing all night; as, indeed, their illusion in that regard, at least, has never been anything but the utmost truth.

“Darling,” Mukuro murmurs against the line of Chrome’s neck, whispering the endearment in his own voice, muffled down to plausible quiet by the intimacy of the moment, by the weight of the night around them. “My sweet girl.” Chrome shudders under him, silent surrender parting her lips on breathless heat, and Mukuro reaches for the weight of her nightshirt to spill the thin weight of it up over the flat of her belly and to the soft curve at the underside of her breasts. Chrome’s legs flex, her hips angle up towards Mukuro’s knee braced between her own, and when her hands find Mukuro’s pants he lets her push them off his hips without resistance, lets the gentle urging of her hands persuade his clothing down and free of his legs. There’s a moment of coordination, a struggle as Mukuro gets himself free of the fabric now pooling around his knees, but he lays claim to Chrome’s hips and pushes her up over the bed as easily as he moves, urging them both higher onto the expansive heights of the pillows so he can catch his toes into the waistband of his pants and kick them over the end of the bed. Chrome reaches for Mukuro’s shoulders, her fingers finding their way in and under the open weight of his shirt, and Mukuro ducks his head forward to encourage the wandering slide of her touch over him as he braces himself with one hand against the bed and reaches to press his fingers in against the inside of her thigh, tipping her legs apart as part of the same motion of pushing up and along the starlight-smooth of skin as untouched by the sun as by any hands not his or hers.

“It could be,” Mukuro says, murmuring the words under his breath as Chrome’s knees part like the petals of a flower, as his fingers skim up to catch against the thin satin of the panties covering her. “Our wedding night, you know. Even without rings.” His fingers slide up and press in; Chrome catches a breath into something high and wanting in her throat, her legs shift wider as if to encourage his touch. Mukuro tips in and down, casting the familiar details of Chrome’s features into his shadow, letting their vision blur into a single shared haze as his fingers press higher, as his touch dips in and up to stroke into the heat of Chrome’s body beneath his. Chrome’s exhale spills from her against his lips, her hand slides up into his hair, and Mukuro follows Chrome’s guidance, his forward motion coming in time with the grip of her fingers winding into the weight of his pulled-back hair.

“Can you imagine it?” Mukuro asks. Chrome is hot to the touch, glowing with heat he can feel radiating against his fingers and sweeping out into his veins; it makes his shoulders tense, makes his body ache with desire only fractionally eased by the motion of his fingers against the soft grip of her body. It would be dissatisfying, in other circumstances, maybe, but Chrome’s head is tipping back against the pillows under them, her neck is pulling to a long line of strain that she’s not giving voice to, and the pleasure of granting heat to her cheeks is more keen Mukuro thinks than even what he might find in the span of his own body. Everything is shared between them, now as much as when they held their existences in the single space of Chrome’s narrow shoulders and soft mouth; this is just nostalgia, for Mukuro, to claim his pleasure from what is quivering against Chrome’s thighs and tightening her body close against the urging of his fingers. “Our first time touching each other, our first time seeing each other?” His fingers stroke up, pressing deep into the heat of Chrome’s body; Chrome’s lashes flutter over her uncovered eye, her teeth catch to hold against the soft of her lower lip like she’s fighting back sound by force. Mukuro huffs a breath and strokes again, pulling the motion long and deliberately savoring. “What it would be like?”

Chrome shakes her head without opening her eye to meet Mukuro’s gaze. Her fingers are curling into his hair, holding without pulling; her legs are angled open into invitation around his own, trembling response without tensing into resistance. “No,” she says, and then she opens her eye to gaze up at Mukuro, to cast the shadows of her attention up at the man leaning in over her. Mukuro’s attention flickers, catching and holding against the night-dark shadows at Chrome’s lashes as if her gaze is hypnotic, as if she’s the one reaching out to take over his body, this time; his movement stills, his fingers still hot inside her but their bodies going quiet in answer to the calm insistence of that gaze.

“I don’t imagine,” Chrome says. “I remember.” And the room shifts, strict geometry falling aside to make space for invention, for recreation, for falling backwards in time and space to revisit the past, and Mukuro groans without thinking of where they are, without thinking about anything at all but the woman gazing up at him from her languid position across the sheets beneath him. He slides his fingers free as the walls reshape themselves, rocks back onto his knees and away from the sliding force of Chrome’s hands in his hair; by the time he’s urging his underwear off his hips the room has become something else, Chrome’s illusions caught in the web of his own memory to become something shared between the two of them, recollection and invention at one and the same time. The room is familiar, the space that of Chrome’s quarters back at the Vongola headquarters; Mukuro remembers stepping through the door in his own body, remembers noticing how the different perspective cast everything into odd shapes, reframed reality to his own physicality in this space that had never seemed anything but familiar from the vantage point of Chrome’s gaze. His clothes slide free, falling aside to his movement or Chrome’s illusion, and Mukuro doesn’t ask where the line is as he leans in over Chrome to surrender to the returning weight of her fingers in his hair. She’s slipped free of her panties too, leaving nothing but the weight of her nightshirt to match the undone fall of Mukuro’s own dress shirt, and even that gives way as Mukuro leans in over her, their clothes melting away as quickly as their appearances, spiraling back in time to return them to that first meeting, that first weight of two bodies moving together in more than imagination, in more than illusion. Mukuro’s hair shortens, Chrome’s cheeks round, and when Mukuro leans in to fit his hips between Chrome’s open thighs it’s with their history draping closer around them than their clothes, with illusion urging at his voice and body to press him near to the wanting curve of Chrome waiting beneath him.

Mukuro can’t tell the difference between reality and illusion as he leans in over Chrome, as he follows the urging of the touch in his hair and bracing at his hip to draw him down to bring their bodies into alignment. There’s the whisper of silky fabric beneath him, a tug of long hair pulling against his scalp: but it’s the walls of Chrome’s room surrounding them, the excitement of novelty cascading itself to an open flame under Mukuro’s skin, as if he’s freshly free from Vindice walls, as if he’s resettling himself into the shape of a body at once familiar and new. He knows Chrome perfectly, intimately, as clearly as he knows the shape of his own form; is it just instinct that guides his hips forward as he thrusts into her, or is it recent experience that tells him to move like this, to shift his weight like that? He can’t tell the difference, can’t draw the line between the past and the present and the vague shadows of the possible future, and it makes no difference anyway, not in the moment, not with them. It is Chrome’s hand curling into his hair, and Chrome’s breathing spilling to the hot, breathless whimper of pleasure at his lips, and reality has always been a toy for them, has been something as malleable and obedient as memory. Enough to have each other, to have the angle of Chrome’s collarbone pressing close against the tension of her skin, to have the soft of her hair falling against Mukuro’s hold, until Mukuro shuts his eyes to the shapes around them outright to lose himself entirely in the only reality that has ever held him, in the span of a universe marked out by the shadows of Chrome’s lashes and the tilt of her knees.

Their motion is easy, elegant and instinctive and unstructured. Mukuro knows the shape of Chrome’s body, knows the tension of her thighs and the curve of her breasts; he knows how to touch her, knows where to ghost his fingertips, knows what paths to lay down across the smooth pale of the invisible scars laid into her body. Illusion and reality, truth and lies: it all spills together, melting and puddling into the one fact of heat, of unity, of their bodies moving over and into each other as Mukuro breathes in the heat radiating off Chrome’s skin, as Chrome arches and shudders under him. His hand is at her back, bringing her weight up close against his chest; his fingers are in her hair, winding through the strands, or cupping a breast to tease against the point of her dark-flushed nipple, or pressing hard to the curve of her thigh to urge them closer together. Mukuro can feel fingers in his hair, nails digging at his back, heels catching hard against his hips as Chrome surges up to meet him, and he can’t tell what is present, what past, what fiction and what not. All that is unimportant, as it has ever been unimportant: because in the end all that really matters is what you believe, and Mukuro can see the answer to that without having to lift his head to see the shadows in Chrome’s uncovered eye fixed on him.

“Chrome,” Mukuro says, groaning the name to heat, uncaring whether it falls against the walls of a hotel room or the silence of the Vongola headquarters. “My Chrome.”

Chrome whimpers a breath louder than what she has offered before, her restraint on her voice fracturing and giving way as quickly as Mukuro moves up and into her. “ _Ah_ ,” she pants, strain clear in her throat. “Mukuro-sama.”

“Chrome,” Mukuro says again; and he ducks his head, and he shuts his eyes, and he tightens his fingers on breast, hip, thigh, whatever he can reach, however he can urge Chrome in against him, however close he can bring them in the haze of illusions fogging reality to their own imagination. “I’ve got you.” His arms flex, Chrome tenses beneath him; the boundaries between them are melting to the heat, Mukuro’s own sense of himself is bleeding outside its natural sphere to lay claim to the air in his lungs, the echoes in the room, the tension in the muscles beneath him. “Let go.”

Chrome doesn’t protest aloud. The only answer she gives is to press herself closer, to cling to Mukuro for a moment of tension: arms and legs and breathing, all clenching tight for the span of a single heartbeat of anticipation. Mukuro’s shoulders tense, Mukuro’s fingers curl to a fist; and then Chrome shouts, her voice spasming outside the tight-held leash on which she usually keeps it, and everything in Mukuro flares to heat, as surely as if he’s become the heart of an explosion. His breath rushes from him, his body tenses against the surge of sensation that washes over him; and for a moment, for a breath, his awareness, his illusions, his existence itself cease. He’s nothing, no one, no more than the chime of a bell hanging in the air, no more than the echo of that shout from a pleasure-strained throat: just sound, and heat, and relief, an illusion granted reality by its own experience.

Coming back together is a slow process. Mukuro’s attention is scattered, shadowed, hiding itself in the fit of Chrome’s fingers and the weight of her eyepatch; he reassembles reality carefully, from the pieces he can find and test and feel. The rasp of his breathing against warm skin, the slick heat of sweat at his chest and pressing against his hips. There’s the soft of fabric caught between him and straining over his shoulders, a tangle of hair loose and winding against his arm and around his careful-curled fingers; when he shifts he can feel an arm looped around his neck and legs caught against his hips. Chrome is breathing hard, silently but with enough force that Mukuro can feel the rhythm of it against his skin; when he rocks back to lift his head and look at her her cheeks are flushed to color clear even in the shadows of the room around them. Her eye is shut, her lips are parted; but her touch in Mukuro’s hair is gentle, her fingers trailing through the long weight of his undone ponytail like she’s looking to wrap herself in the fall of it. Mukuro looks down at her features, familiar as a reflection, beautiful as a lover’s, and he smiles, and he lifts his hand to stroke the weight of her hair back from her features.

“My beautiful Chrome,” he murmurs. He’s speaking softly, his voice catching in his throat almost to silence, but Chrome opens her eye all the same to blink up at him leaning over her. She looks at him for a moment, her attention visibly trailing over his face, and then she smiles, small and careful and secret-sweet at her lips. It makes Mukuro’s own lips curve, as if he’s the mirror and she the viewer, as if his own happiness comes on the heels of hers, and he presses his hand to her cheek and leans in and down to kiss the part of her lips, to taste the shadows of shared conspiracy between them. They linger for a long while there, reshaping reality to the moment, until by the time Chrome’s fingers urge Mukuro back by an inch they’re both breathing hard enough that Mukuro can’t tell which of them began it.

“Someday,” Chrome tells him, whispering the shape of a secret to his lips. “We’ll get married someday.”

Mukuro smiles and lets his fingers slide farther back into her hair. “Someday,” he agrees. “Until then I’m in no hurry to share us.” He lingers against her mouth, sinking into a long, languid kiss; when he pulls back Chrome’s lashes have gone heavy again, fluttering towards her cheeks as her breathing works hard in her chest. “It’s never a bad idea to have a secret or two to yourself.”

“To ourselves,” Chrome says.

Mukuro smiles. “Yes,” he says. “To ourself.” And he leans in to kiss her again as her lips curve up onto an answering smile.

It’s easy to be patient when they are already such a perfect union.


End file.
